Looking back to find out what's ahead

New Year! New people! New hopes and dreams! A time to look forward and predict.

Nah. Let's look back before we all forget where we're coming from. The subject is January 2000. Remember it?

Dennis Wise does. At 1.27 a.m. on January 1st 2000, Dennis Wise and family's latest addition, Henry, was born in London.

In keeping with a theme of the past year, Henry was to be proudly displayed by his urchin father alongside the FA Cup in May after Chelsea had beaten Aston Villa at Wembley.

As for Chelsea last January, Gianluca Vialli was manager, they were through to the second group stage of the Champions League and on the 11th of the month persuaded George Weah to sign on a six-month contract from AC Milan.

The following day, Weah scored in the 1-0 victory over Tottenham. Chelsea were sixth in the Premiership and most things seemed rosy at Stamford Bridge. Claudio Ranieri was the manager of Atletico Madrid.

The same day Weah signed, the Chelsea fan and Sports Minister Tony Banks revealed he had spent £102,780 in two years of campaigning for England to win the 2006 World Cup. Money well spent. Clown.

Some other telling financial facts from a year ago: £348 million - the amount English clubs had spent on transfers in 1999; £4.3 million - the figure Juventus paid West Bromwich Albion for Enzo Maresca, Italy's under-21 captain whose sojourn at the Hawthorns was as remarkable any recent foreign signing; and £25,000 - the amount Swindon Town were losing each week.

The parlous state of the Wiltshire club's finances led them, on January 6th, to sack Jimmy Quinn's assistant manager Mike Walsh and 14 other employees.

Swindon, then in 24th and bottom place in Division One, went on to be relegated. Quinn also lost his job. Everyone outside Wiltshire forgot that in 1994 Swindon had been a Premiership club.

Glenn Hoddle had overseen Swindon's unlikely promotion then and a year ago Hoddle returned to the Premiership with Southampton.

Dave Jones had had to take leave of absence to fight his court case and before you could say "bad karma" Hoddle had been installed at The Dell.

Hoddle's first game in charge was a victory over West Ham and, by season's end, Southampton had avoided relegation for the 22nd consecutive season, by 11 points.

On this day last year, Southampton had 17 points from 19 games - they have 27 from 21 now. So bet on their continued survival.

Most worrying for the clubs beneath Southampton is that on January 3rd last year Wimbledon beat Sunderland 10 to leave them with 25 points from 21 matches.

Wimbledon still went down, managing only eight more points from the next 17 games. That is the kind of statistic that should concern Manchester City - and Everton.

But maybe not Bradford City. Chained to the bottom of the Premiership they may be, but it was a similar story last January.

They had 17 points this day 12 months ago and won another 19 to stay up on the last day of the season.

Until yesterday they had played the same number of matches, so Jim Jeffries' message to his players should be that a 10-20 per cent improvement on present form - not difficult - could keep them on the big money.

Maybe that's what Jeffries said to them before yesterday's game at Leicester.

There are no less than 48 managerial changes from last January in British football , a huge percentage. Paul Jewell was at Bradford, Jeffries was at Hearts, Egil Olsen - remember him? - was at Wimbledon.

And Alex Ferguson was at Manchester United. This time last year Ferguson and United were in the sunshine of Rio contesting a tournament whose name people still think was Mickey Mouse.

David Beckham got shouted at and sent off, Gary Neville got laughed at - by Edmundo - and taken off and United received universal disdain for abandoning the FA Cup.

And while they were gone Arsenal drew at Sheffield Wednesday. Taking advantage of United's pointless absence is Arsenal's behaviour this January too.

When United came back from Brazil their first game was against Arsenal at home. It finished 1-1. Five days later - January 29th United beat Middlesbrough, went top and stayed there. Sounds familiar.

But if there is one place that shows things can change dramatically year on year it is Celtic Park. Last January Celtic went into the Scottish winter break with 40 points, four behind Rangers. John Barnes was the manager.

This afternoon, Celtic start with 60 points and are 12 ahead of Rangers. Martin O'Neill is the manager.

Happy new year.